#30 Symbolic Computation & Dynamic Linear Models, with Brandon Willard

It’s funny how powerful symbols are, right? The Eiffel Tower makes you think of Paris, the Statue of Liberty is New-York, and the Trevi Fountain… is Rome of course! Just with one symbol, you can invoke multiple concepts and ideas.You probably know that symbols are omnipresent in mathematics — but did you know that they are also very important in statistics, especially probabilistic programming?Rest assured, I didn’t really know either… until I talked with Brandon Willard! Brandon is indeed a big proponent of relational programming and symbolic computation, and he often promotes their use in research and industry. Actually, a few weeks after our recording, Brandon started spearheading the revival of Theano through the JAX backend that we’re currently working on for the future version of PyMC3!As you guessed it, Brandon is a core developer of PyMC, and also a contributor to Airflow and IPython, just to name a few. His interests revolve around the means and methods of mathematical modeling and its automation. In a nutshell, he’s a Bayesian statistician: he likes to use the language and logic of probability to quantify uncertainty and frame problems.After a Bachelor’s in physics and mathematics, Brandon got a Master’s degree in statistics from the University of Chicago. He’s worked in different areas in his career – from finance, transportation and energy to start-ups, gov-tech and academia. Brandon particularly loves projects where popular statistical libraries are inadequate, where sophisticated models must be combined in non-trivial ways, or when you have to deal with high-dimensional and discrete processes.Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Brian Huey, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, Adam Bartonicek, William Benton, Alan O'Donnell, Mark Ormsby, Demetri Pananos, James Ahloy, Jon Berezowski, Robin Taylor, Thomas Wiecki, Chad Scherrer, Vincent Arel-Bundock, Nathaniel Neitzke, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Elea McDonnell Feit, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Joshua Duncan, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, George Ho and Colin Carroll.Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)Links from the show:Brandon's website: https://brandonwillard.github.io/Brandon on GitHub: https://github.com/brandonwillardThe Future of PyMC3, or "Theano is Dead, Long Live Theano": https://pymc-devs.medium.com/the-future-of-pymc3-or-theano-is-dead-long-live-theano-d8005f8a0e9bNew Theano-PyMC library: https://github.com/pymc-devs/Theano-PyMCSymbolic PyMC: https://pymc-devs.github.io/symbolic-pymc/A Role for Symbolic Computation in the General Estimation of Statistical Models:

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Are you a researcher or data scientist / analyst / ninja? Do you want to learn Bayesian inference, stay up to date or simply want to understand what Bayesian inference is? Then this podcast is for you! You'll hear from researchers and practitioners of all fields about how they use Bayesian statistics, and how in turn YOU can apply these methods in your modeling workflow. When I started learning Bayesian methods, I really wished there were a podcast out there that could introduce me to the methods, the projects and the people who make all that possible. So I created "Learning Bayesian Statistics", where you'll get to hear how Bayesian statistics are used to detect black matter in outer space, forecast elections or understand how diseases spread and can ultimately be stopped. But this show is not only about successes -- it's also about failures, because that's how we learn best. So you'll often hear the guests talking about what *didn't* work in their projects, why, and how they overcame these challenges. Because, in the end, we're all lifelong learners! My name is Alex Andorra by the way, and I live in Estonia. By day, I'm a data scientist and modeler at the PyMC Labs consultancy. By night, I don't (yet) fight crime, but I'm an open-source enthusiast and core contributor to the python packages PyMC and ArviZ. I also love election forecasting and, most importantly, Nutella. But I don't like talking about it – I prefer eating it. So, whether you want to learn Bayesian statistics or hear about the latest libraries, books and applications, this podcast is for you -- just subscribe! You can also support the show and unlock exclusive Bayesian swag on Patreon!